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ORATION 



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WMlT2^mOA3L MMAir(©I^AOT(©ir 



BRITISH EMPIRE, 



DELIVERED AT SOUTH READING, 



ii^c^^s^ i^siBs^d a^Q^i* 



BY DAVID L. CHILD. 



' Look here upon this picture (ind on this.' — Shakspeask. 



BOSTON: 
PRINTED BY GARRISON AND KNAPP. 



NO. 31, CORNHILL. 

1834. 



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ORATION. 



Next to doing good and great actions ourselves, the best 
thing is to appreciate them duly when done by others. A frank 
commendation of goodness affords a strong presumption of a 
wish to imitate it. We participate the glory which we celebrate. 
On the other hand, self-praise is real reproach, and a man's 
true worth will commonly be found to be inversely as his own 
vauntings. No merit is so great that vanity cannot debase it, 
and none so little that humility may not exalt it. Our assem- 
bling together at this time, if we are actuated by the spirit 
which the occasion supposes and demands, cannot fail to be 
profitable in every view. It is an occasion of self-examination, 
not of self-applause ; of commemorating a great civil achieve- 
ment of another nation, not the military or political glory of 
our own ; of serious and humble preparation for following, not of 
self-complacent pride for setting, a noble example. 

The act of the British Parliament, and we may add in this 
case with peculiar emphasis, of the British nation, passed on 
the 28th day of August, 1833, to take effect on this first 
DAY of August, 1834, enfi-anchises 800,000 West India slaves, 
and confers for the first time the full fruition of civil rights 
upon 100,000 West India freemen. It is an event sublime in 
its nature, comprehensive and mighty in its immediate influence 
and remote consequences, precious beyond expression to the 
cause of freedom, and encouraging beyond any measure of any 
government on earth to the hearts of all enlightened and just 
men. Angels have more joy fgrr this than for the lost, found. 



They hold celestial jubilee for the stolen, restored, for him 
who stole, but shall steal no more, for the sons of God, their 
brethren ' which were dead, and are now alive again.' 

This act was the consummation of a long course of beneficent 
and truly christian legislation. It forms the key-stone of a tri- 
umphal arch, such as earth-born ambition never conceived, reach- 
ing, like the patriarch's ladder, from earth to heaven ; beautiful 
as the rainbow, enduring as the firmament, inscribed in charac- 
ters of effulgence, ' Glory to God in the highest, on earth 
peace, good will towards men.' 

In tracing the history of this subject in England, the first act 
which attracts attention is the emancipation of our own ances- 
tors. For this we owe a debt of gratitude to the free spirit of 
England, which neither distance of time, nor subsequent un- 
kindness, should make us ever forget. The people of our par- 
ent country were reduced to servitude by the Norman invaders. 
They became serfs, technically called villeins ; and the abject- 
ness of the social condition, which the word then denoted, may 
be judged of by the moral degradation which it now implies. 
The English serfs could not contract marriage without the con- 
sent of the noblemen to whom they belonged. They could not 
be witnesses. They could not hold property. They could not 
go from town to town without a pass from their owner. Some 
of them might be sold and carried off; all might be sold with 
the estates to which they were attached ; and they might be 
murdered with impunity, or no other punishment than a slight 
fine. They were subject to other degrading disabilities and to 
cruel legal penalties, from which their lords were exempt, and 
for actions, which, if committed by a lord with a more enlight- 
ened conscience were not deemed worthy of any punishment 
at all ! 

There are probably few of us here, who are not descended 
from some of those, whose condition was such as I have de- 
scribed. They formed the body of the English nation. Their 
lords paramount and proprietors, were military and foreign ad- 
venturers, who were rewarded for elevating their chief to the 
throne of England, by parcelling out among them the property 
and persons of the people of England. This violent and dis- 
graceful state of things continued without essential mitigation. 



(except what was operated by the principle of law, that the 
offspring follows the condition of the father,) just about as long 
as the enslavement of colored men has continued since.* But 
it could not withstand the light which burst from the new-born 
press and from the Reformation. The consciences of masters 
were smitten by that light, with a force and efficacy, which 
belong not to mortal weapons. Four centuries after the Con- 
quest, the English feudal lords began one after another to eman- 
cipate on their respective estates, and to receire rent from 
free-men, instead of personal service from slaves. History 
has not informed us of the troubles, which resulted)^ from this 
measure. The last act of enfranchisement was executed by 
Elizabeth, in 1574, in favor of the serfs on the crown domains. 
All Englishmen were therefore free from villeinage, before the 
emigration of any of the first settlers of New-England. If this 
had not been the case, the most of them would not have been 
permitted to emigrate. The laboring and effective portion would 
not have had either liberty or property to enable them to 
come hither. It would defy human sagacity to say whether 
this fair land would not at this moment have been a howling 
wilderness, or peopled by some strange nation, if it bad not 
been for the timely abolition of slavery in England. 

By one of those amazing inconsistencies, of which the guilt 
and shame belong not exclusively to that country, or to a com- 
paratively dark age, the African slave trade was permitted to 
commence, so far as England was concerned, by the same 
sovereign, who had completed emancipation at home. English 
vessels were licensed to undertake that detestable traffic, by the 
Protestant queen, whom I have just named. It is recorded of 
her that she made on that occasion a declaration, which would 
be altogether incredible, if we were not accustomed to hear 
things equally preposterous and contradictory. She said she 
' was concerned lest any of the Africans should be carried off, 
without their free consent ; that such a thing would be detesta- 
ble, and call down the vengeance of heaven-' It may serve to 
account in some measure for this fatal aberration, that neither 
European governments nor people at that period, concerned 

* It is a cheering coincidence, thai liie bondage of the Israelites in Egypt 
was limited to the same period. 



themselves much about what was done in the distant and un- 
known regions of America. Individual adventurers, actuated 
by love of gain, and regardless of the means by which they 
gratified it, gave a loose to the worst passions of our nature, far 
from all cognizance of human laws. America was regarded and 
used for a century after this epoch, as New Holland is now, 
except tliat convicts transported to Virginia were sold for slaves, 
thus unfortunately giving a taste of flesh. Even as late as 
the latter part of the last century, learned Europeans maintained 
the theory of the essential inferiority, both moral and physical, 
of every thing American. The animals were smaller ; and the 
facial angle degenerated more from the Grecian standard, and 
approached nearer to the baboon and the dog, than in Europe. 
The assertion, that colored men are naturally inferior, was never 
made with more assurance, nor by men of more philosophical 
renown, than the assertion that all animal productions of Amer- 
ica are inferior to their species in other parts of the globe. 
This theory has been applied within the recollection of most of 
us to the productions of American genius, which have been 
pretty extensively pronounced to be so many new proofs of the 
correctness of BufFon's idea of American degeneracy, and of 
an innate inferiority. The feelings of contempt, and indif- 
ference, may account in part for the carelessness and in- 
consistency of the government of Elizabeth, in permitting 
British subjects to enter upon that unhallowed career, in which it 
is difficult to say which predominates, the thirst of gold or the 
thirst of blood. 

But we need not occupy ourselves with curious conjectures 
as to the causes and motives which led to kidnappings a term 
and a trade j)eculiar to the moderns, and unknown to the 
ancients, whose slaves were prisoners taken in national wars, 
and were preserved as slaves, in mitigation of the law of na- 
tions, as then established, by which prisoners of war were to be 
put to death. We have no need to go more nicely to work to 
account for slavery than for other great crimes, — for robbing 
one man of his liberty than another of his purse, his life, or 
his means of living. There have been too many in all ages, 
who were willing to gain support, wealth and power for them- 
selves, by sacrificing the rights, the happiness and the lives of 



others. Those are objects, which the selfish and unsubdued 
passions of the human heart supremely covet. I have no doubt 
that there are thousands at this time, both in England and Amer- 
ica, who would delight to see slavery of every kind restored and 
perpetuated with increased rigor. Some persons imagine that 
they were born to command, and they look upon one, who 
would take away or diminish their power, with the animosity 
with which a tiger regards a competitor for the bodies of 
simple sheep. 

The second act of English abolition was, a decision of the 
learned and upright judiciary of that country. James Somerset, 
an African slave, had been brought to England by his master, 
Charles Stewart, in 1769. Somerset left his master, who took 
an opportunity to seize and convey him on board a vessel, to 
be carried and sold in Jamaica. Granville Sharpe, who had 
studied the law three years with a single view to the investiga- 
tion of the question, — ' Whether in England man could be the 
property of man'? — determined that it should now be settled by 
the highest judicial authority. Somerset was brought up by a 
writ of habeas corpus ; and we are told that the case was ar- 
gued by the counsel for liberty, with an eloquence which was 
never exceeded. History is silent as to the eloquence of the 
opposite counsel. The opinion of all the judges was taken 
upon the pleadings, with this great result, that ' as soon as a slave 
sets foot on British ground, he is free.' This principle was the 
peculiar glory of England, until it was adopted, under the aus- 
pices of Bolivar, into the constitutions of the South American 
republics- It is mortifying to add, that with these exceptions 
and that of the republic of Hayti, the principle is as peculiar to 
England as it ever was. The strong and prophetic lines of 
Cowper, and the splendid oratory of Curran, have made this 
glorious pre-eminence known to millions, who do not consult 
the repositories of law : — 

' Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if Y'leir lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are tree ; 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall. 
That's noble ; and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it, then, 
And let it circulate through every vein 
Of all our empire, that where Britain's power 
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.' 



8 

During most of the period previous to this decision, the Lon- 
don newspapers were disfigured by advertisements of 'runaway 
slaves;' but never since has that scandal of a free state recurred 
in Great Britain. 

The third epoch in the history of English abolition, is the 
establishment of the colony at Sierra Leone. During the Amer- 
ican war, many hundred slaves escaped from their masters, 
chiefly in the southern department, and took refuge in the Brit- 
ish camp. Twelve hundred of these were finally carried to 
Sierra Leone, and put in possession of freedom and the rights 
of British subjects. Seven hundred and seventy-four other 
American slaves, who had in like manner fled from ' friends* to 
enemies, were emancipated by the British, and placed in the 
island of Trinidad. These were the earliest experiments of 
creating free communities out of colored slaves. They have 
been completely successful, and without doubt have had a very 
considerable influence in bringing about that great and final con- 
summation, which it is our happiness this day to celebrate. 
How wonderful and past our finding out are the ways of Provi- 
dence ! Those poor slaves, flying from the lash of republicans, 
who proclaimed all ' men free and equal,' and finding an asylum 
with men advertised to these ' runaways' as tyrants by the same 
republicans, have come to be the pioneers of freedom to mil- 
lions of their brethren, whose wrongs and sufferings in one 
hour, surpass the sum of all that were ever felt or could have 
been apprehended through interminable ages by the American 
colonies from the mother country ! Ours was only partial poli- 
tical subjection ; theirs is complete personal prostration. 

The fourth epoch is that of the abolition of the slave trade. 
This, like the abolition of villeinage, originated in individual 
and voluntary movements, and was effected by the operations of 
the press and of public opinion. To the venerable Thomas 
Clarkson, who is yet alive, the honor of accomplishing this 
event is due, more than to any other man. From the time that 
he graduated at Cambridge university, he made it the business 
of his active life. He it was, who first awakened the minds of 
Wilberforce, Pitt and Fox to the importance of this subject. 
He visited the slave-trading ports and vessels, and ferretted 
out, with infinite pains and at the peril of his life, the appalling 



facts, which astonished and dismayed the British nation. He 
consuhed and labored with Lafayette, Gregoire, and other friends 
of the colored race in France, and furnished materials for the 
plastic mind and commanding eloquence of Mirabeau. For 
twenty years, amidst discouragement and opprobrium, he main- 
tained the cause of justice and humanity against as great a con- 
centration of bad passion and perverted ingenuity, as was ever 
found, except in pandemonium itself. But the question had not 
attained that maturity which prepared it for the labors of Clark- 
son, nor which prepared Clarkson for his labors, without a nu- 
merous and noble list of predecessors ; — Richard Baxter, Addi- 
son, Montesquieu, Godv.in, Steele, Thomson, Shenstone, 
Postlethvvaite, Sterne, Warburton, William Dilwyn, Dr. Hart- 
ley, Granville Sharpe, John Wesley, Whitefield, Adam Smith, 
Dr. Robertson, Abbe Raynal, Thomas Day, Bishop Porteus, 
Gilbert Wakefield, Necker, Fox, the founder of the Society of 
Friends, and that society generally, both in England and Amer- 
ica.* These are a few of the men, whom Clarkson has piously 
embalmed as the forerunners of the abolition of the slave-trade, 
and we may add, of slavery also, because the question of the 
slave-trade necessarily led to discussion on that of slavery itself. 
Every word of fact, argument, or indignation, uttered in Eng- 
land against the trade, was reverberated with startling echoes in 
all the crazy castles of colonial slavery. 

It is gratifying to an American to add, that Mr. Clarkson has 
done full justice to a number of our countrymen, whose writings 
and labors had contributed to the same great result. The most 
considerable of these, next to the Society of Friends, were 
John Woolman, a native of New Jersey, Anthony Benezet, a 
native of France, settled in Philadelphia, Dr. Rush, Dr. Frank- 
lin, and Thomas Jefferson. Clarkson judged Jefferson by his 
writings, not by his practice. Let us cherish the hope that the 
memorable declaration of that influential person, in respect to 
the corrupt tendencies, the blighting effects, and impending 
judgments of slavery, may do more good than his example did 

* No person can have become an intelligent abolitionist without learning to reverence 
the conscientious and disinterested conduct of the Friends. It is painful to be told that 
a large majority o(' those early and thorough-going abolitionists, and parlicularly lliat 
portion denominated orthodox, are now among the greatest sticklers for the pretensions 
of caste. 

2 



10 

evil, and more even than the Declaration of Independence 
itself. The cause is worthier than that of colonial independ- 
ence, inasmuch as political is less bad than personal oppres- 
sion ; and inasmuch also, as oppression of any sort, exercised 
by boastful republicans, is more execrable than open des- 
potism. 

It would be interesting to pursue the Protean advocates of 
the slave-trade through all the forms of sophistry and menace, 
which they successively assumed ; and it would be still more 
interesting to detail the sterling logic, and the overwhelming 
appeals to the better feelings of man, with which those advocates 
were constantly met and routed. Let it suffice to say, that at 
one time the justification of the trade was placed on the ground 
of a punishment of the first murderer, and his descendants. 
When I meet a man, who quotes Scripture to support slavery, 
I feel that 

' Somcihing; wicked this way comes.' 

I feel as if he would not apply to that volume for any other 
purpose. 

When it was answered that the posterity of Cain were all 
drowned in the deluge, the slavites took ground this side of 
the flood. They said that the curse pronounced upon Canaan^ 
was still clinging to the poor Ethiopians, his descendants. In 
answer to this it was shown, that Canaan was the only son of 
Ham, who did not settle in Africa ; that all the others did settle 
there ; that in the original Hebrew, the term which we trans- 
late Ethiopian, is literally, ' descendant of Cush.' And that the 
passage in Jeremiah, ' Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or 
the leopard his spots .'' ' reads in the original, ' Can the descend- 
ant of Cush change his skin, or the leopard his spots .'' ' 

Then it was said that the Africans loved to be kidnapped ; 
that the trip to the West Indies, compared with their condition 
at home, was what the Irish would term, 'going a pleasuring;' that 
' the middle passage' was the happiest portion of a negro's life ; 
and that while it continued, he sung and danced for joy. As 
to these statements of fact, it was shown how the slaves were 
packed between decks, like pork for the market, with an allow- 
ance of room a good deal smaller than a grave ; that they were 
fed on a putrid yam and a pint of water per day ; that from fail- 



11 

ure of water or provisions on protracted passages, whole car- 
goes had perished ; that it was common to throw the sick over- 
board ; that nearly every time the wretches were turned out to 
take an airing, some, and especially little children, would be 
found dead between the decks ; that nearly half of the whole, 
perished in the transportation from Africa to America, or in the 
seasoning to a new climate ; that the slave-traders made it a 
point to s€t sail in the night, in order that their tender hearts 
might not be pierced by the cries and shrieks of the slaves, 
as their native land receded forever from their view ; that the 
dancing which was the evidence of such joy, was a woful 
jumping up and down in chains, under the operation of the whip 
to keep them in health by exercise ; that if suffered to be on 
deck unchained, they leaped overboard to end their miseries ; 
that they would often starve themselves to death by shutting the 
teeth and nobly refusing sustenance, if their mouths were not 
forced open by a powerful steel instrument, like that which 
surgeons use in cases of lock-jaw ; and that the merry songs 
and glees were known to those who understood the language 
to be mournful dirges, in which they bewailed the loss of 
country, kindred and home. One of the witnesses, a mate of a 
slave vessel, when cross-examined before a committee of Parlia- 
ment, as to the cause and manner of this strange merry-making, 
stated, that when the weather was smooth, the slaves were taken 
out every day to dance; that a long and heavy chain was passed 
all around the deck near the railing ; that a row of slaves was 
placed on each side of this chain ; that hand-cuffs which con- 
fined the right hand of one to the left of another, were made fast 
to the long chain, so that they stood in couples, all fastened to the 
great chain ; and that thus arrayed, their dancing commenced to 
the music of the whip. 'I,' said the mate, ' used to dance the 
men, and the captain used to dance the women.' It was also 
testified that a certain slave captain ordered a woman to be whip- 
ped to stop her singing, because her plaintive notes, though 
he was ignorant of her language, ' hurt his ffeelings so.' As to the 
shocking and impious pretence of stealing and chaining men to 
make them happy, Bishop Warburton indignantly asked, — ' But 
who are you, who pretend to judge of another man's happiness, 
that state, which each innan under the guidance of his Maker, 



12 

forms for himself, and not one man for another ? To know what 
constitutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of 
Him who created us, and cast us in so various and different 
moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhap- 
piness in their native land ; or, rather let me ask, do they ever 
cease complaining of their condition under their lordly masters, 
where they see indeed the accommodations of civil life, but see 
them all pass to others, themselves unbenefitted by them ? 

Be so gracious then, ye petty tyrants! to let your slaves judge 
for themselves, what it is which makes their happiness, and 
then see whether they do not place it in their native country, 
rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which 
their misery makes so large a part, — a country so passionately 
longed for, that despairing of happiness, (that is, of escaping 
the chains of their cruel task-masters,) they console themselves 
with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their 
future state !!' Edmund Burke struck at the whole platform of 
this pretended happiness, and demolished it by one thunderbolt : 
' If,' said he, 'you have made a happy slave, you have made 
a degraded man,' and subverted the soul of an immortal being. 

Next, the slavites addressed themselves to the national cu- 
pidity, and uttered melancholy forebodings of the ruin and decay, 
which would be brought upon the West Indies, and upon the 
commerce and the other essential interests of the country. ' The 
fisheries,' said a well-fed London alderman, ' the fisheries in 
particular, will be prodigiously injured by abolishing this valua- 
ble trade. Vast quantities of inferior and damaged fish find 
vent in the consumption of the slaves. Now, Sir, if we abol- 
ish the slave-trade, where shall we find another market for this 
fish .?' 

To such paltry and infamous arguments, which, except in the 
foul atmosphere of prejudice, could not have lived long enough 
to be annihilated, the abolitionists were obliged to oppose the 
great and acknowledged principles of justice, humanity, common 
honesty, and the known will of God. On all occasions when 
other pretences for opposition to the measure failed, the slavites 
rushed into the mists of declamation, and expatiated upon the 
comprehensive horrors of general throat-cutting. It is a fact, that 



13 

the same alarm for the safety of planters and their families, was 
raised against the abolition of the slave-trade, as is now raised 
against the abolition of slavery itself. The reason of this is, that 
the most intelligent slave-trading, slave-holding and slave-breeding 
gentlemen plainly perceive, that if the rational faculties and better 
feelings of the community be once called into exercise upon this 
subject, it will be all over with slavery. Hence their uniform 
policy of forbidding and putting down discussion in Congress, by 
a slap on the mouth as soon as it begins to open, or by drowning 
the voice of justice and mercy with clamor and menace, like 
Richard, lest ' the heavens should hear these tell-tale women.' 
For the sake of the selfish pleasure, baleful indulgences and 
petty tyranny of the plantation, and for the more manly and 
respectable tyranny, which slavery enables them to exert 
over the affairs of the whole Union, prejudices, originating in 
times of ignorance and lawlessness, must not be stirred, but 
remain stagnating, tainting the air, and destroying health, hap- 
piness, and the life of the soul ! 

On the second day of April, 1792, the House of Commons 
adopted a resolution, moved by Wilberforce, sustained by 
Fox, Whitbread and Pitt, and resisted by Dundas, Col. Tarl- 
ton and others, ' that the slave-trade ought to be abolished.' 
The aristocratic branch rejected it, as they usually do, as long 
as they can, every measure of reform — every measure which is 
designed to take from power, and give to the oppressed. 

An amelioration act was however passed, prescribing under 
severe penalties the ship-room, which should be allowed to 
slaves in the voyage to America. A bill abolishing the trade, 
was passed by the Commons in 1794, and thrown out by the 
Lords. At length, on the 25th of March, in the year 1807, the 
slave-trade total abolition bill became a law. It is necessary, 
however, to remark, that this result was chiefly valuable for its 
moral influence. No sensible diminution of the African trade 
resulted from it. About 100,000 men had been annually stolen, 
and exported from Africa to America, previously to the passage 
of the act, and about the same number have been exported an- 
nually ever since. This has induced the British government to 
pass an act constituting slave-trading piracy, and subjecting it to 
the penalty of death ; and they have also, from time to time, 



14 

negotiated with other nations to induce them to adopt the 
same principle, and grant a mutual right to search vessels 
suspected to be concerned in the trade. France, Holland, 
Sweden, Russia, Denmark and Spain have acceded to the pro- 
posal of Great Britain. The South American Republics, and 
also the empire of Brazil, have in form at least concurred. 
Our own government declines. A bill, establishing a mutual 
right of search for this object has been negatived more than 
once by the House of Representatives of this great republic. 
This result has been effected by artfully playing upon a northern 
prejudice against the phrase, — ' right of search.' It is an humili- 
ating fact, but we are accustomed to such facts. 

Still the African slave-trade goes on, and with some new hor- 
rors, which have grown out of the very attempts to suppress it. 
There have been repeated instances of whole cargoes of human 
beings thrown overboard, in the hope of concealing the charac- 
ter of the vessel. The slave-trade will never cease, so long as 
slavery exists. Those who patronize kidnappers by purchasing, 
are in reality the most guilty. They are the principals, the 
kidnappers are mere agents and attornies. The increased 
danger of the trade enhances the profits, and it is now esti- 
mated that if the trader can land safely one third of his cargo, 
he can afford to sacrifice the other two thirds ! ! Where there 
is a market, there will be merchandize ; where there is a de- 
mand, there will be a supply ; where there are carcases, there 
will be vultures. You may as well turn the rivers back to 
their fountains, as to change this law. 

Suppose the county of Middlesex were obnoxious from some 
cause to the inhabitants of Boston ; and it should be the policy 
of that city to send out assassins and highwaymen, to rob and 
murder the inhabitants and fire their dwellings. Then if the 
people of Middlesex should place a guard at Warren Bridge, 
leaving half a dozen other bridges and avenues, besides rivers 
and bays wide open ; their proceedings would be about as effi- 
cacious as the attempt to destroy the slave-trade, while slavery 
itself subsists. Let the infernal incitements to assassins cease, 
and the murder and rapine will cease without guarding the 
passes. AVilberforce lamented in one of his latest public ad- 
dresses that error, which led the early abolitionists to strike 



15 

at a limb, when they should have endeavored to reach the 
vital parts of the trade, which are the slave markets of Amer- 
ica, not the slave factories of Africa. The practical inefficacy of 
the act takes, however, nothing from the merit of its motive. In 
affairs of such magnitude and complexity, it is no impeach- 
ment of human foresight that results do not always correspond 
with calculations. Nothing but repeated experiments can put 
imperfect beings in a sure path. ■ (■ 

The fifth act of English abolition related to the internal slave- 
trade between the different British colonies, and between those 
colonies and other countries. This trade by an act of Parlia- 
ment passed in 1824, was put upon the same footing as the for- 
eign ; and this act was attended with complete success. The 
trade ceased immediately and totally. It being a domestic 
concern, and one in which the custom house officers, ordinary 
magistrates and military force could act, the government was 
enabled to control the whole matter, and to suppress the market 
while they stopped the supply. 

The sixth abolition act of England, was in 1828, by which 
the Hottentot slaves in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, 
to the number of 30,000, were emancipated and raised to an 
entire equality of rights and privileges with the white inhabitants. 
These were a peculiarly degraded class of slaves. They and 
their ancestors, for a hundred and fifty years had been enslaved by 
the sordid and cruel Dutch colonists. Perhaps no human beings 
were ever so assimilated to brutes. They had passed into a 
proverb for stupidity and barbarism. The customary clamor 
was raised against this measure. The usual predictions of 
thefts, murders, robberies and burnings were reiterated. But 
the government proceeded steadily in its purpose. And how 
unfortunate has been the result ! Those unhappy colonists have 
not been able to discern a single speck of insurrection ! No 
plantations have been ravaged, no houses rifled, no babes spit- 
ted on pikes, no mothers consumed in their dwellings, no mas- 
ters' throats cut. As for thieving, it is an acknowledged fact, 
that though extensive before, it nearly ceased after emancipa- 
tion. All slaves will secretly appropriate something to them- 
selves from what they alone toil to produce. In many cases, 
they must do it to avoid fainting in the field from the scantiness 
and badness of their food. This the masters call stealing, and 



16 

usually punish in a sanguinary and often fatal manner. Yet they 
are very indignant when they are charged with stealing the 
bodies and wages, which they take without any excuse, either of 
necessity or desert. The Hottentots are now an orderly, indus- 
trious and improving community. They are eager to acquire 
knowledge; have good schools, numerous flocks, herds, hor- 
ses and wheel carriages ; and they work better for Master Cash, 
than they did for Master Lash. There is no pretence that 
a single instance of any of the predicted horrors has ensued. 

The seventh and last act of British abolition, is that which 
has consecrated this day as one of the brightest in the 
calendar. It is necessary to observe, that this was far frora 
being satisfactory to the anti-slavery men of England. It em- 
braced the conditions of apprenticeship and compensation. But 
I think that the friends of the colored race did right to accept it. 
The question was, whether the slaves should be rescued forth- 
with from torture and chains by a conditional emancipation, to 
become absolute in seven years, or whether the contest for 
perfect justice should be prolonged, and mean time the slaves left 
upon racks. I think abolitionists would have been inconsistent 
if they had held out obstinately at a further expense of tears 
and blood. 

In equity and good conscience, compensation is more due to 
the slaves than to the masters. It is of right due to the injured 
party. The members of the Society of Friends in the United 
States, carrying out honestly in action the principles which 
they acknowledged in the abstract, paid the arrears of wages to 
their freed-men. Who has ever heard that they were impov- 
erished by it, or suffered any drawback upon their prosperity ? 

But admitting in its utmost latitude the principle of compen- 
sation, still I maintain, that money ought not in fact to be award- 
ed unconditionally, because then it might turn out to be not a 
reimbursement for loss, but a bounty for crime. According to 
the statement of Washington, in his agricultural correspondence, 
the land in a free, will sell for ticice as much as in a slave State. 
The enhanced value of the land, and the increased rents and 
profits from free labor will be compensation, and often more 
than compensation, for the supposed loss ; ^and therefore an ab- 
solute payment of money to all slave-owners, at a certain rate 
per head, without waiting for results or examining facts, 



17 

will be in many cases a premium for pre-eminent wrong. If, 
however, compensation should, on striking the balance, be 
thought justly due, nothing can be more manifest than that every 
part of a slaveholding and slave-trading republic ought to bear 
its proportion. 

The conduct of the Antigua planters, while the bill was pend- 
ing, will serve as a fair specimen of the sincerity of those awful 
forebodings and terrible alarms for the safety of the whites, 
which are regularly got up when any measure of justice is pro- 
posed in behalf of the colored race. Those planters performed 
their part in this old farce to admiration. They adjured parlia- 
ment by the love of God, and the love of wives, children and 
home, and by the fear of massacre and universal pollution to 
stop in their wild career. Out of tenderness to those distressed 
persons, the seven years' apprenticeship was proposed with com- 
pensation at the end of that period. The most accomplished 
play-actor could not have changed his tone and manner more 
suddenly than the Antigaa men. ' Poh,' said they, ' this 
apprenticeship is a silly business — all nonsense. If you must 
emancipate, do it to-morrow, and give us our money.' They 
forgot their wives, their children, and their own throats, except 
to exercise them in calling stoutly for the assassins to be let 
loose. It cannot be said they forgot their God, for, ' their god 
was gold, and their religion theft.' Since the passage of the bill, 
the legislature of Antigua have capped their consistency by 
passing an act to liberate their slaves without apprenticeship, on 
this auspicious day. 

It would be very agreeable to my feelings to pay a suitable 
tribute to each individual, who has been long and nobly distin- 
guished by labors and abilities directed to the final accomplish- 
ment of British abolition. But this is impracticable on the 
present occasion. 

There is one individual, who by his talents, his gigantic exer- 
tions and his eminent station, achieved by personal worth, has 
exerted so great an influence, that I cannot forbear to name him. 
I am persuaded that the present Lord Chancellor of England, 
will be remembered by future generations as one of the greatest 
benefactors of Englishmen and of mankind, that God has ever 
lent to earth. As a writer, the author of an early work on the 



18 

Colonial Policy, as a contributor to the Edinburgh Review, as a 
lawyer and a member of Parliament, he has always raised his 
powerful voice, and wielded his powerful pen in behalf of the 
oppressed. In the public meetings of the Anti-Slavery Socie- 
ty, in his place in the House of Commons, and wherever else 
the voice of reason, justice and mercy could be heard, he has 
pleaded during twenty years, the cause of ' the suffering and the 
dumb' His reward is not of this world. He has the fervent 
gratitude of the good and the free. He has the ardent hatred 
of the aristocratic and the evil. This is eulogium enough. 

Long before emancipation was completed, there had been 
great ameliorations of the condition of the West India slaves. 
Slave protectors, or fiscals for the same purpose, were provided 
in all the colonies. These magistrates were armed with great 
authority, and were not allowed to be slaveholders. Careful 
provision had been made for punishing cruelty and murder ; and 
to this end inquests on the view of dead bodies of slaves, 
come to their death by sudden or violent means, were strictly 
enforced. 

Masters were prohibited from whipping women at all, or 
whipping men more than fifteen lashes ; and of that they were 
obliged to make a record, and to do all in the presence of wit- 
nesses. Slaves were made competent witnesses, in all cases in 
the same manner as whites. Slaves were authorized to acquire 
and possess property to an unlimited extent. Masters were 
compelled to emancipate whenever a slave could offer his value 
as fixed by appraisers, chosen one by himself, one by the mas- 
ter, and one by the magistrate. The carrying of a whip, cow- 
skin, or any thing of the kind, either as an instrument of pun- 
ishment, or a symbol of authority, was totally prohibited. The 
quantity and quality of food, clothing and bedding were strictly 
prescribed. Schools were established for the slaves. Work- 
ing on Sundays was prohibited, and liberty to attend public 
worship secured. Marriages of slaves were made sacred and 
inviolable, and separation of families forbidden. The slaves 
were allowed to have half of a working day in each week to 
themselves. These are some of the imjjrovements, which 
had been effected in the condition of British slaves, for many 
years before the late measure. 



19 

And shall we not join in devout thanksgiving to God, and 
in gratulation to that noble people, which was found worthy 
to be the dispenser of so much justice and mercy ? Be 
honor and gratitude given to the thousands of British Anti- 
Slavery Societies, their faithful agents, able writers and eloquent 
orators ; to the nine hundred thousand good men and glori- 
ous women, who petitioned, and prayed, and wrought, and gave 
of their earnings to redress the wrongs, and to pour consolation 
into the hearts of the oppressed and despised of the earth. 

While Britain has been practising the ' righteousness which 
exalteth a nation,' what have we done to put away the ' sin, 
which is a reproach to any people ? ' we who have su- 
peradded to the universal obligations of justice, as pub- 
lic and solemn an engagement as mortals can contract, that all 
men within this republic shall be ' free.' Monarchists, whom 
we sometimes indulge ourselves in denouncing as despots and 
slaves, have done for liberty without a pledge, what we have 
refused to do with one, the most binding ; or if it be not so, 
virtue and honor are names to cheat the unwary, and our 
professions false dice. In the face of Heaven and of men, 
' we pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,' to 
support certain principles upon which alone we justified resistance 
and asked the divine blessing .'' Those principles were ' That all 
men are born free and equal, that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ;' that ' these truths 
are self-evident,' that is, as clear to the mental, as the light of 
heaven to the natural eye ; and that all men, when the govern- 
ment under which they live fails to secure to them these, have 
a right ' to throw it off.' These were no new truths. They 
existed from the foundation of the world, and they were always 
known and believed by all men having liberty to learn and be- 
lieve. Our covenant implies thus much, for it declares that 
these principles are set forth to show ' a decent respect for the 
opinions of mankind.' It would seem from our subsequent 
practice that they were set forth for no other purpose ! Man- 
kind were swindled of their sympathy and assistance. 

Our nation erected on these principles, unjustly if they 
are false, is the most unjust of all nations if they are true. 



20 

The guilt of doing wrong is always in proportion to the knowl- 
edge of what is right. We boast of superior knowledge, are 
we aware that in the same breath we boast of superior 
guilt ? We have withheld and we continue to withhold 
from a large portion of the people, those rights which we 
professed to ask and to receive for the whole. A Russian or 
oriental despot might have some apology for such conduct. He 
denies that liberty and a free pursuit of happiness are blessings 
to the people, because he says that they are incapable of enjoy- 
ing without abusing them. But for us there is no excuse. We 
not only acknowledge, but we loudly proclaim to the world that 
liberty and education are blessings, to which every man has by 
the gift of God, a right to aspire and attain ; and yet we tyran- 
nously combine to forbid these blessings to millions of our inno- 
cent countrymen. This is adding hypocrisy to crime. We are 
obnoxious to the fatal reproof of the apostle to Ananias : — 
' Why hath Satan put it in thy heart to keep back a part of the 
price of the land .'' Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto 
God!' 

There are in the midst of this republic a number of men, 
larger than the entire population in 1776, who are doomed 
by us to chains and slavery, — slavery, compared with which 
the grievances of which we complained w-ere frivolous. 

The braggers of American liberty are the lords of mil- 
lions of slaves ! The assertors of the inalienable rights of man 
respect no right but that of the strongest. The metropolis 
of freedom is a foul prison-house of innocent men, women and 
children — a vile shamble for their sale. The small red ensign of 
the auctioneer of their fiesh, floats under the protection of the 
starry banner. The clank of their chains mingles with con- 
gressional harangues in praise of liberty, and of ' the heaven- 
born band,' who shed the blood of their masters to obtain it! 

I gladly turn from such humiliating inconsistencies. Let 
deep darkness overshadow and hide them from sight. It is fearful 
to contemplate such mockery. Let slaveholding republicans 
give their vocabulary its customary airing ; — let them make 
periodical apostrophes to hberty, or pathetic complaints of the 
violation of equal rights in the partial distribution of loaves and 



21 

fishes ; — mean while let the manar-led mother, weeping for her 
children, take up her march to the markets of the far south- 
west ! 

What have we done during sixty years, to ameliorate the con- 
dition of wronged and wretched men ? We have multiplied 
oppressions and increased their weight. 

Formerly there were laws in the slave states imposing a /ne, 
for the wilful murder of a slave. Those laws were sometimes 
executed and amounted to some restraint. Now they are re- 
pealed and replaced by laws imposing nominally the penalty of 
death ; but they are never executed, and are no restraint at all ! 
The fault is, not merely in the judges and juries, but in the 
legislatures, who obviously intended from the beginning that 
those laws should be ineffective. Never was there seen more 
detestable instances of hypocricy, that vice which gilds over, 
and gives currency to all other vices, than can be found in 
the pages of planters' legislation. Language is there used, ac- 
cording to the rule of old Talleyrand, to conceal thoughts. 
There an unwearied study, and most perverse ingenuity are 
directed to the reconciling of ' decent' appearances with dia- 
bolical realities. These terms are strong, but hearken to the 
evidence. 

North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have similar provi 
sions on the subject of the murder of slaves. The preamble of 
the leading act, that of North Carolina, declares that ' a distinc- 
tion of criminality between the murder of a white person and 
one, who is equally a human creature, but merely of a different 
complexion, is disgraceful to humanity, and degrading in the 
highest degree to the laws and principles of a free christian and 
enlightened country.' The act then proceeds to provide ' that 
the wilful and deliberate murder of a slave, shall be punished 
with death.' So much for ' decent' appearances ; and now mark 
the dreadful reality; — 'Provided, however, that this act shall 
not extend to any slave dying under moderate correction !' — 
Dying under moderate correction ! If there be any degree of 
malice more savage than that which kills by lingering torments, 
then this law may be a restraint upon such malice ; but to call it 
protection, is the most impious mockery that ever insulted 



22 

heaven. Shrouded in the cowl of a monk, it points out the way 
to murder. 

' Of all the rpprobale 
None seemed malurer for the flames of hell. 
He was a livpocrite.' 

In South Carolina, the same object is effected with equal 
safety and equal sincerity. The preamble is equally pious, 
just and magnanimous. It abounds in 'noble sentiments:' 
' Whereas cruelly is not only highly unbecoming those, who 
profess themselves Christians, but odious in the eyes of all men 
who have any sense of virtue or humanity;' and, ' as the slaves 
are under the government, so they ought to be under the pro- 
tection of masters and managers of plantations ;' ' and because 
many cruelties may be committed on slaves when no white per- 
son may be present to give evidence of the same ;' therefore it 
is enacted ' that if any slave shall suffer in his life or limb, or 
other member, the owner or other person having the care and 
government of him shall be taken and deemed to be guilty of 
such maiming or murder, unless he shall by his own oath 
clear and exculpate himself;' which oath ' every court is em- 
powered to administer and to acquit the oflender accordingly.' 
A perfect rail-road to an acquittal ! or, if it be not perfect, it is 
to be presumed that the legislators of Carolina will make it so 
as soon as they shall discover wherein it is deficient- 
There is one other touch of hypocrisy in this same act, too 
curious in its kind to pass unnoticed. It is that this oath shall 
be allowed, even if a white person were present at the murder, 
if such white person ' shall neglect or refuse to give evidence, 
or to be examined on oath ;' thus inviting and instigating a cit- 
izen, commanded by the state to appear and testify in court, to 
stay away in contempt of the court, or to stand mute in like 
contempt ! 

My friends, perhaps you do not believe these monstrous 
stories ; I cannot blame you if you do not. In truth, they are 
incredible, yet I have quoted the words of the statutes. It is a 
principle of common law, that no man shall be permitted to 
stultify himself. If this principle were applicable to states, 
these laws would be null and void ; they are self-stulti- 
fying ; their action is in direct conflict with their reason. 



23 

The highest tribunal of Carolina, in applying the statute, has 
declared that by the above provision it is rendered nugatory. 
It is, however, effectual for one purpose. It stamps upon the 
bold brow of tyranny the mean mark of hypocrisy. 

The law of Virginia is contrived with more subtlety, but to 
the same end, practically screening from any punishment, men, 
whom ' a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,' makes 
it necessary to denounce as worthy of the highest. The law in 
Virginia is, that an examination and acquittal by justices of the 
peace, shall be a bar to any other prosecution, and shall oust the 
grand jury of its jurisdiction, in cases of murder. The grand 
jury cannot indict after such acquittal, nor before such exam- 
ination. 

Now that this most strange and anomalous legal machinery 
was contrived on purpose to screen the murder of slaves, is 
apparent from this, that in other cases of crime, and of course 
inferior crime, the jurisdiction of justices of the peace is not 
final ! If, therefore, a man rob a hen-roost in Virginia, he may 
be indicted by the grand jury, though acquitted by a thousand 
justices ! But, if he rob one, whom we have the authority of 
North Carolina for calling ' equally a human creature with our- 
selves,' of the precious jewel of life, such acquittal can never 
be legally called in question, or revised by any human tri- 
bunal. It is consoling to reflect that there is one where it 
may be. 

I do not refer to the laws of all the twelve slave states, be- 
cause time would fail us. It is sufficient to say that in effect, 
they all screen crimes of the deepest die from any punishment. 
No instance was ever known in any of them of a white man 
being punished, capitally, for the murder of a slave, or of any 
colored person. This fact has been published to the world 
again and again, during the last ten years, and no man has ven- 
tured to contradict it. Every planter knows, and some ac- 
knowledge, that the murder of slaves by barbarous and inquisito- 
rial tortures and str.rvation, or by sudden and mortal violence, is 
too common to excite remark. No man, who possesses a char- 
acter for truth and values it, will venture to assert that the 
penalty which the southern laws decorously provide, was ever 
applied to a white for the murder of a sla\c, or of any colored 



24 

man. I will say further, that such is the demoralized slate of 
feeling in the slaveholding communities of our republic, that 
ihey would not permit an impartial administration of the law in 
this respect, even if all the ingenious clogs, designed to prevent 
any operation at all, were removed. 

A gentleman, who hears me, formerly resided in Washington, 
in the District of Columbia, and he states, that a clergyman de- 
clared a few years ago, that he had resided there as pastor of a 
church nineteen years ; that during that period, no year 
had passed without the murder of one or more slaves within the 
District ; that, during the same period, there had been but one 
execution, and that was of a colored man for attempting to 
commit a crime against a white. 

Achilles Murat, late a citizen of the United States, and a 
slaveholder, is one of the freshest and honeslest writers in de- 
fence of slavery, being an open derider of virtue. He frankly 
admits that ' there is in fact no law, to protect ^^merican slaves 
against ill treatment from their masters.' 

In 1824, a Virginia jury propounded to the judges of the Court 
of Appeals, the highest court of law in the state, this question 
— ' Can a master be indicted for beating his slave cruelly, inhu- 
manly, and beyond the bounds of moderation ? ' The court said 
that this wa3 a very ' grave' and ' delicate' question, which they 
should not then decide. This question has never been decided 
judicially in any of the slave states ; nor has it been raised in 
any except Virginia. But who does not see that not to decide 
was deciding it ? The most solemn decision in favor of the 
master, could have conferred no power, which the steting of a 
decision did not leave with him. It left right with might, where 
it has always been, and gave a new sanction to the unholy union 
by refusing to disturb it. In the Declaration of Independence, 
withholding redress for wrong is charged as a crime upon the 
king, and he is declared to have ' abdicated government' by 
putting his subjects ' out of his protection.' If the government 
of Virginia have put half a million of subjects ' out of their pro- 
tection,' it follows from their own reasoning, — that reasoning on 
which our whole system is founded, — that they have ' abdicated 
government.' And why should it be thought a wonderful or 
dreadful thing that their subjects, so much more oppressed than 



2d 

they ever were, should have adopted their conchislon and imi- 
itated their example. I am not in favor of insurrection. 
I believe that slavery can be abolished without a resort to vio- 
lence ; but I see not how those, who applaud our forefathers of 
'75, can condemn the slaves — for rising. I will not belie my prin- 
ciples. I acknowledge that I regard the black Poles of America, 
with the same feelings as I do the white ones of Russia, and rank 
the Virginian Turner, in the same grade with the Scottish 
Wallace. 

It is a duty to the cause which we are engaged in, to show 
the practice, under these laws. 

On the tenth day of April last, a splendid private dwelling in 
the city of New Orleans, was discovered to be on fire. Fire- 
men and citizens hastened to the scene. The flames spread 
with great rapidity. A rumor arose among the crowd, that there 
were slaves chained in the building. The proprietor, a lady, 
together with her husband, was standing near, attended by a 
number of fi lends. Those friends, out of delicacy to the prin- 
cipal party, were first applied to for information upon the sub- 
ject by one of the criminal judges of the city, who happened to 
be present. This application was treated with indifference. 
Mean time the rumor gathered strength, and the judge ventured 
to accost in a polite manner the proprietor and her husband, and 
to ask for the keys of the apartments of their house. They 
replied in an insulting tone, ' that there icere persons, who would 
do much better by remaining at home, than by interfering with 
their neighbors in the quality of officious friends.' By this 
time, anxiety and indignation had risen to a height which repu- 
diated politeness. It is a sad proof of the habitual awe which 
slaveholding power imposes, that the people should have repress- 
ed their indignation so long. The doors were forced, and dis- 
closed scenes of horror, to which the bloody chamber of Blue- 
beard had before given a fictitious existence. In the kitchen 
was found one aged woman, emaciated with hunger, lacerated 
with scourging, covered with the sores of old wounds, chained 
to the floor ; and, to use the expression of the newspapers of 
New Orleans, ' half cooked,' for the fire had approached near 
her. In another apartment of the lower story were found two 
girls, one with a heavy iron collar, and both confined with 
4 



26 

irons, and dreadfully bruised and wounded. From the garre 
four other wretches were unchained from painful postures, and 
borne through hotness and suffocation from the dens of the 
demon. Some of ihem had been imprisoned by her many 
months. Fed with a handful of meal, and scourged and beaten 
every morning, they were reduced almost to skeletons, and 
the bones of some protruded ; but their miserable existence was 
protracted by their tormentor, for the purpose of inflicting 
refined cruelties and gradual death. I do but quote the 
expressions of a New Orleans editor, in saying, that ' seven 
slaves, more or less horribly mutilated, were seen, some chained 
to the floor, and some suspended by the neck to the ceiling, 
with their limbs stretched and torn from one extremity to the 
other. Language is powerless and inadequate to give a proper 
conception of the horror, which a scene like this inspired ; 
we will not attempt it.' ' Their bodies,' says another paper of 
the same day and city, ' from head to foot, were covered with 
scars and sores, and filled with wounds.' ' One poor old man, 
upwards of sixty years of age, was chained hand and foot, and 
made fast to the floor, in a kneeling position. His head bore 
the appearance of having been beaten until it was broken, and 
the worms were actually seen making a feast of his brains ! ! ' 

Forgive me that I inflict upon you this hideous rehearsal. 
That which is not too bad to be permitted, must not be thought 
too bad to be told. Our nerves must not be more tender than our 
consciences. Facts must be presented in their appalling reality, 
or the apathy of Nevp-England, and the torture of our misera- 
ble fellow-men, will be eternal. 

When this relation first reached Boston, the several papers 
containinji" it, were put into my hands, with a request to prepare 
for the Liberator, in the absence of its able editor, an account 
of the transaction. I therefore gave more than common atten- 
tion to it. In reflecting upon it, I could not but be struck with 
the circumstance, that the information that seven human beings 
were on the point of perishing in a burning edifice and broad 
day, should have originated from without, and not a voice be 
heard from within ! Why did not those lost wretches shriek, as 
the flames darted like serpents towards them .'' There seem- 
ed to be but two modes of explaining the phenomenon. One 
was, that they welcomed death, even in this dreadful form ; the 



27 

other, that they were from habit and long experience impressed 
with the behef that cries would bring no help, but rather pro- 
voke new cruelties. Subsequenlly I saw a gentleman of our 
city, who was at New Orleans when this event occurred. He 
saw and conversed with some of the slaves, who survived, 
two of them having died very soon after their rescue. His 
verbal explanations cleared up several points, which the news- 
papers left obscure. Besides visiting the slaves at the city 
prison, (for it seems that no better place was provided for those 
innocent and suffering persons,) he went to the near neighbors, 
and inquired how it was that they did not hear and report, what 
had been so long going on over the way, or on the other side of 
the wall. They replied, that those slaves could not cry aloud, 
for their mouths were constantly kept wide open by iron instru- 
ments, which forced the tongue upwards to the roof of the 
mouth ; that, nevertheless, the poor creatures had been in the 
habit of sending forth at certain hours in the morning, when 
their mistress went her rounds, certain low moans — deep and 
sepulchral sounds of wo, which had driven the neighbors to 
retire regularly every day during five months to apartments the 
remotest possible from the place of these torments. And yet, 
during all that period, no complaint was laid before the public 
authorities, and no investigation made nor demanded ! My in- 
formant stated a further circumstance, wliich the public papers 
did not. One girl whom he saw, had on her bosom a deep im- 
pression of a flat-iron, as well def. led as those which are seen 
upon an ironing-cloth ; she related, that her mistress, as a mode 
of torture, took a hot flat-iron from the fire, placed it upon her 
breast, and lashed it there with cords, until in that situation 
it cooled ! 

It was stated in one of the earliest accounts of these crimes, 
that the perpetrator was arrested, and would be brought 
to condign punishment. From the knowledge which I had of 
the slave codes, and of the customs of our slaveholding com- 
munities, I ventured to doubt, in the observations inserted in 
Liberator, the correctness of that statement ; and to predict 
tliat the murderess would not be punished ; and that the surviv- 
ing slaves would one day be restored to her. I felt assured 
that an instance of impartial justice and adequate punishment 



38 

for a crime of this sort, would carry too much terror through 
a slaveholding community to be thought of for one moment, so 
long as slaveholders preside over the administration of the laws. 
The next mail brought news that the great criminal or her 
husband, had not been arrested ; that no attempt had in fact 
been made to arrest them, though one of the chief criminal judges 
of the city was the principal witness of their fiendish and frantic 
barbarity ; and that they had some difficulty in escaping from 
the city, being pursued, and nearly caught by the excited pop- 
ulace, who undoubtedly would have put them to death, if they 
could have laid hands on them. Fortunately for the culprits, 
the carriage in which they had ensconced themselves was mista- 
ken, and rolled from New Orleans. Soon afterwards, the lady 
and her mate having openly traversed almost the entire length 
of the United States, safely embarked at New York for France. 
The firemen and spectators saw with pleasure, the house con- 
sumed, and a bonfire made of the elegant and costly furniture. 
The whole establishment being erased from the city, they pro- 
ceeded to search the premises for proofs of other murders. 
They found several skeletons buried at a slight depth in the 
yard ; they found several more ' in a condemned well ;' so 
called, probably, because the Board of Health had ordered it to 
be shut up and discontinued. It may be readily supposed that 
the persons who prosecuted investigations, were not slavehol- 
ders. I am informed that they were exclusively laborers, me- 
chanics and sailors. The masters, on the contrary, were alarmed 
and disgusted at the impertinent and dangerous curiosity, which 
they witnessed. Their love of order and the supremacy of the 
laws, dormant, while the innocent and the weak were the vic- 
tims, became an active principle, when the strong and guilty 
were threatened. Cries issued from the crowd that other per- 
sons, who were named, treated their slaves as bad, and had 
made away with as many as Lalaurie. And a ready shout de- 
cided that they would proceed to investigate the new cases. 

The magistrates, who could not arrest a couple of male- 
factors the day before, now bravely made head against a mighty 
and exasperated multitude. The sheriff read the riot act, and 
troops were assembled. But the brave and kind-hearted sailors, 
and the sturdy working-men, were not easily intimidated. For 



29 

some time the sheriff and the soldiers were unheeded, and it was 
not until a portion of the United States' army, together with the 
city legion — a sort of State standing army kept up in time of 
peace to keep down liberty — were paraded with loaded and lev- 
elled muskets, that they slowly retired. To complete the fulfil- 
ment of the prediction, an action has been commenced against 
the city by the agents of the murderess, to recover her slaves, 
and the value of her furniture and other property destroyed. 
There is little doubt that the suit will be successful. 

I find a strong confirmation of the fact, that the cries of slaves, 
undergoing torture and barbarous violence, are not wont to at- 
tract attention, in a statement of one of the students of Lane 
Seminary, delivered during the late admirable discussion which 
occurred at that institution. He was, I think, from Alabama ; 
born and brought up in a slareholding family, and the heir of a 
slave inheritance. He stated, and repeated in the most deliberate 
and emphatic manner, that in the treatment of American slaves, 
* cnielty is the rule, kindness the exception.' It was so com- 
mon to hear the cries of tortured slaves, that no attention was 
paid to them. Many other gentlemen of the Lane Seminary, 
being sons and heirs of slaveholders, have confirmed the same 
fact ; and they fully concur in the opinion that ' cruelty is 

THE RULE, AND KINDNESS THE EXCEPTION.' 

From a great variety of impressive facts, testified on that oc- 
casion by native citizens of slaveholding states, I select one. It 
was related by a gentleman from Missouri. 

A young woman, at all times very ill-treated, after receiving 
a more severe flogging than usual, ran away. In a few days, 
however, she returned and went to work in the field. ' At this 
time, the garment next to her skin was stiffened by contact with 
the wounds of former whippings. Towards night she told her 
master that she felt very sick, and could work no more. She 
crawled to the kitchen and laid herself down, exhausted. Her 
mistress asked what the matter was, but the girl did not answer. 
The question was repeated, and no answer returned. ' I'll see,' 
said the mistress, ' if I can't make you speak,' and she heated 
the tongs red-hot. The flat parts were applied in this state to 
the soles of her feet, but she uttered not a word. They were 
passed along her person from the feet to the face, and applied in 



30 

several places with no better success. At last the gentle oper- 
ator seized with the tongs the girl's throat. And now she spoke, 
bill it was only to whisper, ' OA, jVissa, don't ; Vm most gone^' 
and expiied. The mistress lives now in the same place, and 
owns slaves. 

An officer of the United States' army, who was in the expe- 
dition from fortress Miinroe against the Southampton slaves in 
1831, speaks with constant horror of the scenes, which he was 
compelled to witness. Those troops, agreeably to their orders, 
which were to exterminate the negroes, killed all that they met 
with, although they encountered neither resistance, nor show of 
resistance ; and the first check given to this wide and barbarous 
slaughter grew out of the fact, that the law of Virginia, which 
provides for the payment to the master of the full value of an 
executed slave, was considered as not applying to the cases of 
slaves put to death without trial. In consequence of numerous 
representations to this effect, sent to the officer of the United 
States army commanding the expedition, the massacre was sus- 
pended. 

In ordinary cases, the same motive of mercy does not exist. 
If a slave be convicted and executed, the master receives his 
value in money at the place of execution. So far, therefore, 
from having a pecuniary interest in giving protection and render- 
ing justice to his helpless slaves, the very reverse is the truth. 

It was suggested in a work published by a clergyman about 
«ight years ago, that in case a master or any of his family com- 
anitted a capital crime, the murder of a white for example, there 
■was no difficulty in fixing the accusation upon any of his slaves, 
or upon any colored man ; because, as the testimony of no col- 
ored man, bond or free, is admitted in any slave state, that of 
one white man must commonly be conclusive. A colored man 
might have been a hundred miles from the scene of the murder, 
surrounded by his family and friends, or by his fellow-servants, 
when the deed was done ; and yet he would not be permitted 
to show it by the evidence of any number of colored persons, 
that is, of the only persons with whom, from the state of our 
society, he could have been, and by whom alone he could prove 
where be was. If one white man bear witness against him he 
must die ; and his master, the sole witness against him, and per- 



31 

haps the veritable criminal, will receive a gratification of avarice* 
under the same gallows, which quiets his fear. I have often 
thought that if the celebrated Mrs. Chapman had been a slave- 
owner, her paramour might have been now alive, and her repu- 
tation unstained. 

There have been within my recollection, several cases of 
slaves burned alive. A discretionary power in justices of the 
peace, and three to five planters, to inflict that mode of death, 
exists in some of the Slates. No other civilized state in the 
world practises burning alive. Some nations may burn, but 
they extinguish life before the fire commences. 

This single branch of slave law and practice, and this limited 
view of it, must suffice for the present occasion ; but I will 
state a few general heads, without detaining you with detailed 
proofs and illustrations, which it is much easier to collect than 
to relate. 

Slave laws of this Republic forbid the master to allow his 
slave to acquire property, (even though the master be himself 
willing,) under severe pecuniary penalties. 

Slave laws of this Republic in liice manner forbid a master to 
manumit his slave under penalty of confiscation of the slave, and 
a fine upon the master of one hundred to one thousand dollars. 

Slave laws of this Republic place impediments in the way of 
free colored men, unjustly held or reduced to slavery, asserting 
and proving their right to freedom ; it being a rule, that none in 
the actual condition of a slave can bring an action in his own 
name, and the laws making it hard to procure a white to do it, 
because the white without any interest, is liable to a fine, or to 
double costs, if the action fail. The judge and jury in such a 
case, (the only one in which a jury is allowed to a slave,) are 
all freeholders, i. e. slaveholders, — white laborers and leasehol- 
ders being disqualified, and even a slaveholder if he is a mem- 
ber of any emancipation society. 

Slave laws of this Republic interdict any colored man frorri 
learning to set types and handle a press. 

Slave laws of this Republic prescribe no limit to the punish- 
ments of whipping, chaining, beating, and starving. 

Slave laws of this Republic leave the quantity and quality of 
food and clothing of the slave, at the will of the master. Some 



33 

states have affected to regulate these, and I will give you one 
specimen of the sincerity of these regulations. In South Car- 
olina, if a slave be insufficiently fed or clothed, a ivhite man 
may complain for him to a magistrate, and the magistrate may 
order suitable food and clothing, unless the master ' exculpate 
himself by his oun oath.' Why not let the magistrate have the 
slave before him, and judge by inspection whether the charge 
be well founded ? But no ; the master must judge after all, and 
he might as well decide the case at home, where in fact he has 
already done it, as before a justice of the peace. In Georgia, 
if a complaint be made by a white man, that a slave has insuffi- 
cient sustenance and clothing, the judges of the inferior courts 
before whom the complaint is made, may sue the owner for such 
amount as is necessary for the relief of the slaves. No provision 
is made for costs ; so that the result is, that judges of one court 
may sue in another, at their own risk, to obtain necessary food 
and clothing for another man's slave, that man the adverse 
party, and not one of his slaves competent to give evidence 
how iheir fellow slave is clothed or fed ! 

Slave laws of this Republic interdict the light of knowledge 
and the consolations of religion, from two millions and a half of 
rational and immortal beings. They prohibit the alphabet, the 
bible, and any book or pamphlet whatsoever, not only to slaves, 
but also to all colored men, and the imparting of instruction in 
reading or writing, or of mental instruction in any form, or the 
loaning of any book, under penalties varying in different states 
from ihirty-nine lashes, fifty dollars fine, and twelve months im- 
prisonment, to five hundred dollars fine, perpetual impris- 
onment, or death. The Bible Society, if that respectable 
association should ever come to regard the poor oppressed and 
benighted slaves as men, (and they have on these very grounds 
a peculiar claim to christian benevolence and sympathy ; 
a claim which we hear urged all over the nation in favor of 
foreign colored men) — the Bible Society, I say, would be 
fined, whipped, sent to the penitentiary, or put to death ! And 
this is the system which men dare to assert, is sanctioned by the 
Bible. 

The Bible says—' Thou ;shalt do no murder.' Does this 
sanction a system of murder .'' 



33 

' If a man be found stealing his brother and maketh merchan- 
dize of him, then that thief shall die.' Does this authorize 
kidnapping f 

' Thou shalt not compel thy brother to serve as a bond ser- 
vant, but as a hired servant and sojourner shall he be with thee.' 
' Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your 
fields, which of you is kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cry 
of them which reaped hath entered into the ears of the Lord of 
Sabaoth.' This I suppose is a commandment to keep slaves and 
defraud the laborer of his wages. 

* Thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the servant which 
has escaped from him unto thee.' This appears to be a clear 
injunction to deliver up fugitive slaves to their masters. 

' Woe to him who buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth 
a city with iniquity.' This is a manifest approval of the sacri- 
fice of all the rights of the colored race, in forming the Federal 
Constitution ; and affords a well founded hope of the perpetuity 
of that instrument. 

' The people of the land have used oppression and exercised 
robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have 
oppressed the stranger wrongfully.' ' If thou dost not speak to 
warn the wicked of his way, that wicked man shall die in his 
iniquity, but his blood will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, 
if thou warn the wicked of his way, and turn him from it, if he 
do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou 
hast delivered thy soul.' ' If thou sayest, we know it not, doth 
not He who pondereth the heart consider it ; and He that keep- 
eth thy soul, doth He not know it .'' ' These texts were no doubt 
designed to quiet the consciences of timid, time-serving minis- 
ters of the gospel, who /ear to warn the wicked of his iniquity. 
Or who excuse themselves by knoioing nothing about the matter. 
' He that keepeth thy soul, doth He not know it ^ ' 

It has been said that the apostle Paul has sanctioned the re- 
lation of slave-master and slave, in the third and fourth of Colos- 
sians ; and the reason usually assigned for this conclusion is, 
that the word rendered ' servant ' in our English version, might 
with equal propriety be translated slave. Suppose it be so, the 
argument is as strong against as in favor of slavery, and I should 
think somewhat stronger, when we consider the whole spirit and 



34 

tendency of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament. 
But the proposition is not true ; the word used in the original 
Greek corresponds exactly to our word servant, which is a gen- 
eral term capable of embracing slaves, but commonly meaning 
those serving on contract for wages. The Greeks like ourselves 
had another word meaning slaves. 

To test in a plain and common-sense way the correctness of 
this imputation upon Paul and his Master, let us translate the 
passage with its context, upon the hypothesis that the word 
should or might be translated slave. 

'Chap. 3 — 22. Slaves obey in all lliings slave-masters Hccording: to the flesh; not 
in eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in simplicity of heart, as fearers of God. 

23. And whatever ye do, do it from the heart as to God, and not to men. 

24. Knowing' that from the Lord, ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance ; 
for ye are slaves to the Lord.' 

' Chap. 4. — 1. Slave-masters, give to your slaves that which is just and equitable, 
knowing that you have a slave-master in Heaven.' 

If this simple test has made you perceive the injustice done 
to the apostle, and to our religion, it has also made you perceive 
clearly the impiety, and, I had almost said, blasphemy of the 
authors of that injustice. 

But, says the slaveholder and his parasites, how can you think 
of emancipating the slaves, when they will immediately turn 
and cut our throats, massacre our families, burn our houses, and 
rob us of every thing .'' If such a fear really exist in any mind, 
it must be from the consciousness of having done that to the 
slaves, which would naturally provoke a dreadful retaliation — not 
from any experience that we have ever had of the moral char- 
acter of colored men, or of any men. The colored race are 
proved by history, and by the concurrent opinions of writers 
both for and against them, to be singularly mild, hospitable, kind, 
and forgiving. Their enemies and calumniators admit this. 

But the theory is absurd in respect to any human beings. It 
is injurious to man and dishonorable to his Maker. 

If a man take with force his brothers' wages, wife and chil- 
dren ; if he scourge and incarcerate him, and sell them, this will 
make his brother peaceable, contented and grateful. But if a 
man restore to his brother, walges, wife and children, release him 
from prison, and heal his wounds, this will make his brother 
discontented and vindictive ! 



35 

If a child be pinched and pricked by its nurse, it will be quiet 
or laugh ; if it be tended kindly, it will cry. This is the theo- 
ry, stripped of the unmeoning and delusive phraseology in which 
it is usually presented. Do good to a man, and he will hate 
you ; do him evil, and he will love you ! 

I could state many instances, in which colored men — emanci- 
pated by their masters, and afterwards acquiring property, and 
their masters becoming poor and unfortunate — have maintained 
them ; and oftentimes out of their daily earnings. An in- 
telligent colored man of Boston, who has been in most of 
the slave territories of America, after relating to me a number of 
. cases, exclaimed in conclusion, ' Cut their masters' throats .'' — 
They would kiss their feet.' 

You have already been directed to the happy results, as far 
as we know, of the English experiments. There is one other 
to which I will advert for a moment, because it is constantly, 
sometimes ignorantly, often maliciously, misrepresented. I allude 
to the case of St. Domingo, which is a strong one in favor of 
immediate emanci|)ation. 
.' ' When the French National Assembly declared that ' all men 
-' are born free and equal, and have a right to continue so,' the 
mulatto slaves and freemen of St. Domingo, (for there were 
many of them free, the mulatloes having for many years previous 
to the French Revolution, followed the condition of tbeir 
fathers^ instead of their mothers,) requested in a quiet manner, 
a recognition of their freedom and civil equality, in conformity 
to the decree. The planters promised a compliance, and held 
a Convention in the Island, ostensibly to make arrangements for 
that purpose, but in reality to concert measures for putting down 
the mulattoes, and perpetuating slavery. They disregarded 
the spirit of the law, and broke their promise. The mulattoes 
flew to arms, and they were soon joined by the slaves generally. 
Then, indeed, commenced a bloody revolution. But our revo- 
lution was bloody, without as much justification for blood. Great 
revolutions are usually bloody, but on whom is the guilt .'* 
Doubtless on those who withhold from men their just rights — 
not on those who claim and vindicate them. It is the denial of 
rights that raises insurrections. It was not the granting, but the 



36 

withholding of emancipation, which deluged St. Domingo with 
blood. 

The British invaded the island while the contest was still go- 
mg on. The planters then proposed to the colored party, to 
make common cause to repel the English, in consideration of 
which, the masters would renounce their claims, and the freedom 
and persons of all should be henceforth held inviolable. The 
English evacuated the island in 1797 ; Toussaint was chosen 
Governor, and the island was prosperous and the people happy, 
until Buonaparte in ISOi, sent out the cruel and perfidious expe- 
dition of Le Clerc, under the most fair and friendly pretences, 
but with secret orders to re-enslave or exterminate the colored 
race. Under these circumstances, a bloody war re-commenced, 
but the first and the worst examples of cruelty were exhibited 
by the whites. Thus it appears that the revolution of St. Do- 
mingo, in every stage of it, furnishes the most decisive proof of 
the dangers of slavery, and of the sound policy, and superior 
safety of immediate emancipation. If the planters had yielded 
their assent to the peaceable demand of liberty and equal rights, 
and had continued to conduct in the spirit of that assent, there 
is no reason to suppose that trouble would have ensued. ^^^ 

Lafayette was a man whose love of liberty was not a hoTiday 
phrase ; it was with him an active afiection of the heart, not a 
cold and inoperative abstraction. Lafayette was consistent. 
Having bravely and disinterestedly aided in vindicating our rights, 
he did not incur the reproach of hypocrisy, by turning and 
trampling on the rights of others. 

' 'T is Ihe last key stone 

That makes the arch ; the rest that there were put 

Arc nothing till that comes to bind and shut. 

Then stands it a triumphal mark ! Then men 

Observe the strenjjih, the height, the why and when 

It was erected j and still walking under, 

Find some new matter to look np and wonder.' 

For the purpose of applying his principles to men of color, 
he purchased a plantation in the French Guiana. His first step 
was to collect all the whips and other instruments of torture and 
punishment, and make a bonfire of them, in presence of the 
assembled slaves. He then instituted a plan of giving a portion 
of their time to each slave every week, with a promise that as 



37 

soon as any one had earned money enough to purchase an addi- 
tional day of the week, they should be entitled to it ; and when 
with this increased time to work for themselves, they could pur- 
chase another day, they should have that, and so on, until they 
were masters of their whole time. In the then state of anti- 
slavery science, this gradual and sifting process was deemed 
necessary to form the character of slaves, and to secure the safety 
of the masters. Abolitionists would not elect this mode now. 
They would turn slaves at once into free laborers or leasehol- 
ders, on the same estate, if possible, where they have been as 
slaves. Still there is not an American abolitionist, who would 
not rejoice to see a single Southern planter copy the plan of 
Lafayette, or take any other step tending to emancipation, how- 
ever remote. Before Lafayette's views were fully executed, 
the French revolution occurred, which interrupted his operations, 
and made the slaves free at once. But mark the conduct of 
the ungrateful and blood-thirsty blacks. While other slaves in the 
colony availed themselves of the first moment of freedom to 
quit the plantations of their masters, by whom they were gen- 
erally ill-treated, Lafayette's remained, desiring to work for 
their humane and generous friend, until he should be indemnified 
for the expenses and sacrifices he had made in prosecuting his 
noble scheme. 

But Lafayette is gone ; gone too, when, perhaps, we needed 
his affectionate and moderating counsels the most. The great 
friend of our country is no more. He lies low — the pale and 
cold tenant of the grave. That eye, which intelligence kindled 
and benevolence tempered, is quenched in its sunken socket. 
Although Heaven, propitious to the prayers of nations, spared 
him beyond the ordinary course of nature, still we would gladly 
have held him back as a beloved guest, whose departure, though 
we know it necessary, pierces our hearts with grief. His head 
was serene as the clear heavens, his heart as beneficent as the 
beams of the sun. It passed the bounded continent, and cheer- 
ed and blessed the people afar. Who shall catch his spotless 
mantle .-' When shall we see the like of Lafayette again ? 

Shade of the virtuous dead ! Look down from thy bright 
abode, upon thy humble friends and followers. Entreat with 
the Enthroned Wisdom of the Heavens in behalf of those who 



38 

are suffering the wrong and outrage, with which the land is filled. 
Intercede with the Father of mercies, the God of all grace, hope, 
and consolation, that he would pity and save them ; that he 
would touch with a living fire, from the altar of his love, the 
hearts of the people whom thou hast cherished ; and make them 
burn with thine own sentiments of grief and shame, that this foul 
blot still remains deepening upon the escutcheon of our country. 
Welcomed of angels ! desired of good men ! too soon for us, 
and too late for thee, hast thou joined the spirits of just men 
made perfect in Heaven. 



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